I played 1.6.0 last time half a year ago or so. I see much improvements and I like them.
These I found strange or annoying and can be improved:
The companions shift their location so quickly when I would reach their location they are in the opposite direction already. This is very annoying. Give them +1 day to the relocation trigger, please.
The preview of items in the items/trade menu is too dark.
There are too many noble recruits. It's easy to hire 40-50 nobles in peacetime. I think their number should be halved or reduced even more.
It's easy to maintain an abnormally high noble ratio in the army which makes battles trivial. The player already has a huge edge having highly skilled troops all the time.
It's still very strange bandits can be converted to nobles. They should be converted to common soldiers, and maybe on lower levels, too, when having that perk.
Looters should be upgraded to imperial archers as well. This one is no big deal but why not?
Btw looters, there could be an Aserai variant, and maybe a Khuzait one.
Smithing: I need to check the 'Show only unlocked pieces' every single time I make a new project. It's not user friendly and should work in reversed mode, starting as checked. Or save my setting permanently.
It's cool to have a smithing memory for the last 10 items. However, saving recipes would be far better. At least 6 save slots are required with the ability to name them but 10 would be the ideal. The names could appear in hovering texts so they don't take up space, or as a single text box.
What recipes would I save?
-My weapon on horseback
-My weapon on foot/siege
-One for developing smithing
-One for followers
-Two different types for selling
-Four weapons for orders worth 70-80k. They usually want the same stats so I use a text file to save the most important ones: 2h sword, 2h axe, polearm and a mace.
It would be useful if we could copy a weapon recipe from a weapon from the inventory menu. For example when I forget to save it in a text file and even vanilla ones. Yes, I need to use a text file to save recipes, but what about those who don't know we can copy-paste recipe codes? This should work on vanilla items as well.
Star falchion blades (Star Falchion Blade Head, Pointed Falchion Blade) are too good. Their incredible size fits even the anime style well, they should be reduced by about 20-30% to make them more in line with other blades, and more believable as weapons. The lack of thrust is not a hindrance but an advantage.
When smelting weapons, the game should unlock parts from the weapons we just destroyed. It should give random pieces only after we unlocked all of them. This would be good for two reasons:
-We would have some control about the pieces we get. Typically I have level 200 smithing but no 2h hammer pieces are unlocked even though 30% of the customers order 2h hammers.
-Culture. We would be able to get the related pieces to a certain culture more quickly. Buying and smelting these weapons would be costly, so it wouldn't be an exploit.
Another solution would be to prioritize the culture of the smith (or our hero) when we unlock parts, but the previous one makes more sense.
There should be cultural filters in the smithing menu to improve immersion. Universal parts should appear with any filters.
There should be a filter to 'Show 1h/2h handles only' / 'Show 2h handles only' when both types are available. Or at least an icon on the grips like in case of civilian weapons.
Crafting legendary weapons would be more enjoyable if it doesn't depend on chance but a time limit. For example we could craft one every 7 days. There could be some flashy graphical sign, like 7 burning torches in the forge when the possibility is available and a checkbox when we actually want to make one. Collecting a bunch of materials and crafting the same weapon one after the other in the hope of success is not very satisfying, it's just annoying grind. But choosing the materials and parts, clicking the checkbox, and finally the crafting button knowing we finally get the weapon we always wanted would be fulfilling for sure. You may add a little sound effect, too.
Skill levels after 275 could give extra weapon stat points, or could reduce the cooldown to 1 day.
The game still doesn't tell me who are the captains. I saw the menu to appoint leaders to my troops, but they are called commanders and not captains. There is no info page about captains. This is a base concept of the game, thus the player should know this from the game and not from the net.
I still needed to google how to start a caravan. No info page about caravans and I didn't find it in the obvious place, where I manage my clan.
We should be able to deduce the effectiveness of the workshops from the game. Oil press should be very profitable where there is oil production, etc. Maybe the game should give them some free raw materials so the caravans don't destroy their business, base income or whatever.
Spears are still ****ing slow and deal low damage. Spears were the most important weapons of the middle ages, so they should be implemented properly.
Skill list in the trade/items menu should be in order according to the character menu. It should start with 1h weapons, etc. This is the hovering list when I move the cursor above the helmet icon.
We should be able to rename custom weapons from the items menu, too. Maybe even regular weapons and they would get a new entry in this case.
There should be black-haired Aserais and Khuzaits. Actually most of them should have black hair. Almost all of them have light brown hair currently, like everyone else, so they aren't a good representation of Arab, Turkish, Mongol and other steppe people. Even their brown hair should be of dark shade.
Some hair colors don't look good. Only the brown and the pale hairs look appropriate. The blond and red hairs have too obvious black hair lines, the shades of the base hair texture is too dark and visible.
There is no real, pure black hair in the game. Even the blackest hair is just very dark brown. And there should be at least 2 black variants because children will rarely inherit black hair even when both parents have it. You could replace the odd orange hair with a new black color. I mean the 6th one.
Children of lords don't resemble their parents. A good randomizer tool could help you quickly generate faces for relatives. And not only the faces but the hair, too. Sometimes children have afro hair when their parents don't have such a feature.
Children should inherit the culture of the clan and not the culture of the mother. The player should be able to change the culture of his/her clan. This wouldn't change the culture of the hero or the companions! Such a change should change the culture of the little children as well, but not the adults. When naming newborns, the game would use the name list of the clan's culture.
When an NPC clan belongs to a kingdom with a different culture, say for 15 years, they might change their culture.
This method would work for men who bring wives from abroad and would work for female clan leaders.
The culture of the NPC clans could be a hidden parameter because knowing it isn't important for the game.
There are too many children, we don't need this many. There are far more newborns than deads, so the number of the clan members grow radically.
After more play, I think their number is okay as it is.
The Aserai lands are too secluded and wide in range, they have a harder and longer time to participate in wars. It takes ages to their parties to reach the frontline. I play as an Aserai now, so this is a my personal experience. Your Mediterranean Sea are too wide for this campaign, its eastern coast should be around the Vostrum-Razih line.
Their southern settlements (Iyakis and Askar) should be rather on the east or west or both. Askar could be moved with the whole river.
Furthermore, the city of Odokh of the Khuzaits should be moved a bit to the south-southwest to be closer to the Aserai. It's early access yet, you can.
The Aserai needs 10-20% movement BONUS on sand. It's not logical at all but they need it on this map to get to the frontline. You could delete the sand penalty for others so the difference remains the same.
Anyhow, they need something for gameplay reasons.
The Aserai don't have wood resource. The surroundings of Husn Fulq have many forests so there should be a village with wood resource. It would make Husn Fulq a smithing center like Damascus was.
The team unfortunately doesn’t know the difference between brass and bronze. It might be a language issue, I don't know.
Brass isn't tough enough to make proper armor from them. Hilts were sometimes made of brass even though less durable than steel.
Please, replace every Brass with Bronze in the name of armors.
Change the tint of bright yellow armors to brownish red or pale yellow. Use less specular effect on them.
If you need examples, I suggest to google the 'Neil Burridge sword' term. He makes bronze replicas. In other cases the material composition is not known. You shouldn't check the brand new ones, but his older swords which got some patina already.
Khuzait wanderers cannot ride. Is this serious? I know riding is the easiest skill to level, and athletics is the hardest, I judge the style here.
The She-wolf has athletics of 113 but no riding.
The Mad has 90 athletics of 90, no riding.
The Alone has athletics of 70, no riding.
Ironeye has no riding.
The Hawk can ride. Finally someone.
These are just the current types in my campaign.
Troops (my archers) shift their lines from 3 to 5-6 men deep, and it's almost impossible to set it back to 3 lines on the battlefield in a whole army. They should remember their formation and reform when the terrain makes it possible again. It's hard to tell if it always the terrain the reason of their formation change.
Sieges
I cannot tell my catapults to stop shooting. They shoot my own troops when they are at the walls or the gate.
I cannot tell the siege towers and the battering ram when to start advancing.
I cannot attach a companion with high throwing skill to the siege engines on the battlefield. So the throwing skill of engineer companions is wasted.
Do you plan to implement the feature when we can control a random soldier after our hero has fallen in the battle? This idea was so good I need to remind you.
The best feature in the game is still the fighting so any new feature which gives more opportunity is good. Like the castle assault after sieges, which was new for me.
Please, make it possible to turn off skill leveling reports on the screen (Ungabunga got +1 riding), like we can turn off experience reports.
There are so much reports after a while, it makes me ignore the all the reports. Thus I can miss important messages.
The loot means only money. We rarely can use the items we find so it's boring, and means only a few extra clicks. There are many games with good loot systems where the players can actually enjoy looting and Bannerlord could use some mechanics to improve it. Even if the total value of the loot is the same, the quality could be better for certain pieces. By quality I mean valuable pieces. After our hero got his equipment, we could still use items to arm our companions. There would be a longer period when we check the loot list with interest in a campaign.
We should be able to get some memorable loot sometimes. Maybe when we personally kill enemy lords on the battlefield. Or just anytime when defeating lords. Or both. It can be memorable when we get the tier 6 sword of an enemy lord, or his armor, or his helmet worth 90k. It should be rare, maybe once in every 50 battles, multiplied by the looting from roguery. It's a single player game, it doesn't matter if we get that high tier item on level 5.
The metallurgy perk from the engineer would suit better to a looting skill. Most of the roguery perks are irrelevant, so any could be replaced with looting perks.
Marrying is ridiculously easy. The king happily marries his daughter to a nobody who doens't even a vassal, thus not a lord. Marrying to a noble family should require some prestige, a clan rank requirement or having at least a castle which is even better in my opinion. Thus grind would be rewarded.
Our vote in decisions is meaningless. Whatever is the subject almost all lords support the same solution, so our vote doesn't matter at all regardless of the influence we burn. The only occasion when it might sometimes matter is the distribution of fiefs.
1-2 lords could vote after ours so we wouldn't be able to calculate the odds precisely.
There is no way to pay ransom for our heroes if we misclick the ransom offer window. It should be available somewere in the clan menu.
Lords start new armies too often. Nobody cares about enemy parties who raid our villages, and when I release someone from my army he immediately raises another useless small army. Small armies are too weak to conquer castles and too slow to fight individual enemy nobles.
There should be an invisible limit how many armies a kingdom has. It should depend on the number of the parties including mercenaries, and a starting kingdom shouldn't have more than 3 armies.
These I found strange or annoying and can be improved:
The companions shift their location so quickly when I would reach their location they are in the opposite direction already. This is very annoying. Give them +1 day to the relocation trigger, please.
The preview of items in the items/trade menu is too dark.
There are too many noble recruits. It's easy to hire 40-50 nobles in peacetime. I think their number should be halved or reduced even more.
It's easy to maintain an abnormally high noble ratio in the army which makes battles trivial. The player already has a huge edge having highly skilled troops all the time.
It's still very strange bandits can be converted to nobles. They should be converted to common soldiers, and maybe on lower levels, too, when having that perk.
Looters should be upgraded to imperial archers as well. This one is no big deal but why not?
Btw looters, there could be an Aserai variant, and maybe a Khuzait one.
Smithing: I need to check the 'Show only unlocked pieces' every single time I make a new project. It's not user friendly and should work in reversed mode, starting as checked. Or save my setting permanently.
It's cool to have a smithing memory for the last 10 items. However, saving recipes would be far better. At least 6 save slots are required with the ability to name them but 10 would be the ideal. The names could appear in hovering texts so they don't take up space, or as a single text box.
What recipes would I save?
-My weapon on horseback
-My weapon on foot/siege
-One for developing smithing
-One for followers
-Two different types for selling
-Four weapons for orders worth 70-80k. They usually want the same stats so I use a text file to save the most important ones: 2h sword, 2h axe, polearm and a mace.
It would be useful if we could copy a weapon recipe from a weapon from the inventory menu. For example when I forget to save it in a text file and even vanilla ones. Yes, I need to use a text file to save recipes, but what about those who don't know we can copy-paste recipe codes? This should work on vanilla items as well.
Star falchion blades (Star Falchion Blade Head, Pointed Falchion Blade) are too good. Their incredible size fits even the anime style well, they should be reduced by about 20-30% to make them more in line with other blades, and more believable as weapons. The lack of thrust is not a hindrance but an advantage.
When smelting weapons, the game should unlock parts from the weapons we just destroyed. It should give random pieces only after we unlocked all of them. This would be good for two reasons:
-We would have some control about the pieces we get. Typically I have level 200 smithing but no 2h hammer pieces are unlocked even though 30% of the customers order 2h hammers.
-Culture. We would be able to get the related pieces to a certain culture more quickly. Buying and smelting these weapons would be costly, so it wouldn't be an exploit.
Another solution would be to prioritize the culture of the smith (or our hero) when we unlock parts, but the previous one makes more sense.
There should be cultural filters in the smithing menu to improve immersion. Universal parts should appear with any filters.
There should be a filter to 'Show 1h/2h handles only' / 'Show 2h handles only' when both types are available. Or at least an icon on the grips like in case of civilian weapons.
Crafting legendary weapons would be more enjoyable if it doesn't depend on chance but a time limit. For example we could craft one every 7 days. There could be some flashy graphical sign, like 7 burning torches in the forge when the possibility is available and a checkbox when we actually want to make one. Collecting a bunch of materials and crafting the same weapon one after the other in the hope of success is not very satisfying, it's just annoying grind. But choosing the materials and parts, clicking the checkbox, and finally the crafting button knowing we finally get the weapon we always wanted would be fulfilling for sure. You may add a little sound effect, too.
Skill levels after 275 could give extra weapon stat points, or could reduce the cooldown to 1 day.
The game still doesn't tell me who are the captains. I saw the menu to appoint leaders to my troops, but they are called commanders and not captains. There is no info page about captains. This is a base concept of the game, thus the player should know this from the game and not from the net.
I still needed to google how to start a caravan. No info page about caravans and I didn't find it in the obvious place, where I manage my clan.
We should be able to deduce the effectiveness of the workshops from the game. Oil press should be very profitable where there is oil production, etc. Maybe the game should give them some free raw materials so the caravans don't destroy their business, base income or whatever.
Spears are still ****ing slow and deal low damage. Spears were the most important weapons of the middle ages, so they should be implemented properly.
Skill list in the trade/items menu should be in order according to the character menu. It should start with 1h weapons, etc. This is the hovering list when I move the cursor above the helmet icon.
We should be able to rename custom weapons from the items menu, too. Maybe even regular weapons and they would get a new entry in this case.
There should be black-haired Aserais and Khuzaits. Actually most of them should have black hair. Almost all of them have light brown hair currently, like everyone else, so they aren't a good representation of Arab, Turkish, Mongol and other steppe people. Even their brown hair should be of dark shade.
Some hair colors don't look good. Only the brown and the pale hairs look appropriate. The blond and red hairs have too obvious black hair lines, the shades of the base hair texture is too dark and visible.
There is no real, pure black hair in the game. Even the blackest hair is just very dark brown. And there should be at least 2 black variants because children will rarely inherit black hair even when both parents have it. You could replace the odd orange hair with a new black color. I mean the 6th one.
Children of lords don't resemble their parents. A good randomizer tool could help you quickly generate faces for relatives. And not only the faces but the hair, too. Sometimes children have afro hair when their parents don't have such a feature.
Children should inherit the culture of the clan and not the culture of the mother. The player should be able to change the culture of his/her clan. This wouldn't change the culture of the hero or the companions! Such a change should change the culture of the little children as well, but not the adults. When naming newborns, the game would use the name list of the clan's culture.
When an NPC clan belongs to a kingdom with a different culture, say for 15 years, they might change their culture.
This method would work for men who bring wives from abroad and would work for female clan leaders.
The culture of the NPC clans could be a hidden parameter because knowing it isn't important for the game.
After more play, I think their number is okay as it is.
The Aserai lands are too secluded and wide in range, they have a harder and longer time to participate in wars. It takes ages to their parties to reach the frontline. I play as an Aserai now, so this is a my personal experience. Your Mediterranean Sea are too wide for this campaign, its eastern coast should be around the Vostrum-Razih line.
Their southern settlements (Iyakis and Askar) should be rather on the east or west or both. Askar could be moved with the whole river.
Furthermore, the city of Odokh of the Khuzaits should be moved a bit to the south-southwest to be closer to the Aserai. It's early access yet, you can.
The Aserai needs 10-20% movement BONUS on sand. It's not logical at all but they need it on this map to get to the frontline. You could delete the sand penalty for others so the difference remains the same.
Anyhow, they need something for gameplay reasons.
The Aserai don't have wood resource. The surroundings of Husn Fulq have many forests so there should be a village with wood resource. It would make Husn Fulq a smithing center like Damascus was.
The team unfortunately doesn’t know the difference between brass and bronze. It might be a language issue, I don't know.
Brass isn't tough enough to make proper armor from them. Hilts were sometimes made of brass even though less durable than steel.
Please, replace every Brass with Bronze in the name of armors.
Change the tint of bright yellow armors to brownish red or pale yellow. Use less specular effect on them.
If you need examples, I suggest to google the 'Neil Burridge sword' term. He makes bronze replicas. In other cases the material composition is not known. You shouldn't check the brand new ones, but his older swords which got some patina already.
Khuzait wanderers cannot ride. Is this serious? I know riding is the easiest skill to level, and athletics is the hardest, I judge the style here.
The She-wolf has athletics of 113 but no riding.
The Mad has 90 athletics of 90, no riding.
The Alone has athletics of 70, no riding.
Ironeye has no riding.
The Hawk can ride. Finally someone.
These are just the current types in my campaign.
Troops (my archers) shift their lines from 3 to 5-6 men deep, and it's almost impossible to set it back to 3 lines on the battlefield in a whole army. They should remember their formation and reform when the terrain makes it possible again. It's hard to tell if it always the terrain the reason of their formation change.
Sieges
I cannot tell my catapults to stop shooting. They shoot my own troops when they are at the walls or the gate.
I cannot tell the siege towers and the battering ram when to start advancing.
I cannot attach a companion with high throwing skill to the siege engines on the battlefield. So the throwing skill of engineer companions is wasted.
Do you plan to implement the feature when we can control a random soldier after our hero has fallen in the battle? This idea was so good I need to remind you.
The best feature in the game is still the fighting so any new feature which gives more opportunity is good. Like the castle assault after sieges, which was new for me.
Please, make it possible to turn off skill leveling reports on the screen (Ungabunga got +1 riding), like we can turn off experience reports.
There are so much reports after a while, it makes me ignore the all the reports. Thus I can miss important messages.
The loot means only money. We rarely can use the items we find so it's boring, and means only a few extra clicks. There are many games with good loot systems where the players can actually enjoy looting and Bannerlord could use some mechanics to improve it. Even if the total value of the loot is the same, the quality could be better for certain pieces. By quality I mean valuable pieces. After our hero got his equipment, we could still use items to arm our companions. There would be a longer period when we check the loot list with interest in a campaign.
We should be able to get some memorable loot sometimes. Maybe when we personally kill enemy lords on the battlefield. Or just anytime when defeating lords. Or both. It can be memorable when we get the tier 6 sword of an enemy lord, or his armor, or his helmet worth 90k. It should be rare, maybe once in every 50 battles, multiplied by the looting from roguery. It's a single player game, it doesn't matter if we get that high tier item on level 5.
The metallurgy perk from the engineer would suit better to a looting skill. Most of the roguery perks are irrelevant, so any could be replaced with looting perks.
Marrying is ridiculously easy. The king happily marries his daughter to a nobody who doens't even a vassal, thus not a lord. Marrying to a noble family should require some prestige, a clan rank requirement or having at least a castle which is even better in my opinion. Thus grind would be rewarded.
Our vote in decisions is meaningless. Whatever is the subject almost all lords support the same solution, so our vote doesn't matter at all regardless of the influence we burn. The only occasion when it might sometimes matter is the distribution of fiefs.
1-2 lords could vote after ours so we wouldn't be able to calculate the odds precisely.
There is no way to pay ransom for our heroes if we misclick the ransom offer window. It should be available somewere in the clan menu.
Lords start new armies too often. Nobody cares about enemy parties who raid our villages, and when I release someone from my army he immediately raises another useless small army. Small armies are too weak to conquer castles and too slow to fight individual enemy nobles.
There should be an invisible limit how many armies a kingdom has. It should depend on the number of the parties including mercenaries, and a starting kingdom shouldn't have more than 3 armies.
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